The greatest thing about having interesting friends who are much older than me is the types of stories that I’m told and simply can’t empathise with/relate to. One such friend relayed to me a lengthy tale once about AIDS in the 1980s and the stigma that surrounded it. Y’see, the lack of social understanding of AIDS and was how it was transmitted led to widespread fear of not just those suffering from the terrible disease, but also those who worked with the sufferers (my friend was one of the latter folks).
Fast-forward to nowadays and the term AIDS, at the very least in my generation, doesn’t carry nearly the same sort of social ignorance or widespread fear as it did 30 years ago. But one word that does carry the same awful heart-stopping fear (minus the social-outcast component) is cancer. It seems that there are so many ways that one can actually and supposedly get cancer that it becomes difficult to sort informed fact from misinformed fiction.
Smoking cigarettes is the one that everyone seems to be most aware of (whether directly or passively), although my grandfather stood as a cancer-free exception to that rule until the day he died. Inadequate protection from the sun is another big concern, particularly in the sun-loving nation we reside in; but then there are a myriad of other questionable email/SMS/Facebook status update messages about the latest cancer scare that are difficult to take seriously, regardless of how real they may be.
I remember seeing advertisements that talked about how every Australian will either be diagnosed with some form of cancer or be close to someone who has/will. At the time, I couldn’t think of anyone and felt that I was one of the lucky ones. It didn’t take me too long to realise that there were several instances in my circle of family and friends.
But we may be one step closer to the end of the cancer stigma. You may have seen this story on the PopSci front page that talks about an experimental drug that is having some impressive results with cancer patients. Where a lot of current medicine provides a ‘damage control’ approach to dealing with cancerous cells, this experimental drug cuts off the blood flow to the cancer, causing it to die off.
This is the first time that I’ve actually acknowledged that a tangible cure to cancer may be closer to reality than the desperate hope of millions of people. I really like the possibility of a day when being diagnosed with cancer is mentally shifted into the ‘completely treatable’ category and no longer resides in the ‘utterly hopeless’ column.
What do the rest of you think?
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